nomen est omen
by blueasjazz
Summary: Fairytale!AU ; oneshot — What's in a name? / A thousand-fold names cannot change the nature of man. Spain/Belgium/Romano.


**nomen est omen**

**starring. **Belgium and Romano. Hints of Spain/Belgium as well as Romano/Belgium. Because the latter pairing needs more love.

**author's note. **So I'm basically obsessed with fairytales at the moment, however juvenile it may seem. If it's mixed together with Hetalia het!pairings - particularly the Tomatriangle ;9 — it's basically a freaking recipe for awesomeness. Can you catch all the fairytale references? I'm thinking yes, because I'm a pretentious, pretentious person who likes to insert stupid stuff and subtlety is _not _my forte.

**ratings/warnings. **Second-person view, abundance of parentheses and wannabe-surrealism. Implied things that are borderline PG-13, but it's nothing too obvious.

**summary. **What's in a name? / A thousand-fold names cannot change the nature of man.

[A "_Rumplestiltskin_" retelling.]

**. . .**

You weep and weep, your tears and sorrows endless, for self-pity segues into fear and fear into despair.

You spin once more, like you have done since sunset and the end of twilight, but still — the straw breaks. What holds together cannot be twisted around a spindle.

You choke on dust, on straw, on helplessness. You are going to die.

"Why do you weep?" someone says.

You open your eyes, clover-green and blurry with tears, meet the strangest, brightest eyes you have ever seen. You could not describe their owner if you tried, though you see him so clear he turns the world into a half finished painting superimposed with russet curls and olivine peridots.

"The king is going to kill me," you say, a mocking smile painted upon your lips, simple with self-pity. He raises his eyebrows, his visage a perplexing mix between indifference and animosity. Still, his lips form into a lazy half-smirk.

"Such a pretty thing, you would think a man would not waste such beauty."

"He wants gold more than he wants me," you say. You do not have the words for what this means to you; you do not know what to be more frightened of — death or the nameless look you do not comprehend. "He wants me to spin all this straw into gold, and it is impossible!"

Words crowd on your tongue, explanations such as: _he has Fair Blood, somewhere far back, and diluted as it is, he thinks he can recognize something of it about me. He remembers that a cinder-maiden can morph into a queen, that a girl of sixteen summers can sleep and never grow any older, and that pouch full of gold can be made from leaves, but not that they are leaves again the next morn_. He looks at you and you forget them.

"What is your name, pretty thing?"

"B-Belle," you stammer. (Foolish girl, every tale tells you names are power.)

"Belle?" he rolls the consonants on his tongue; it is bizarre, it is strange and it is foreign. "Belle. I think it suits you. You are indeed lovely, indeed fitting a name like that. Cease your weeping; my dear, my lovely, the task before you is not so much."

"You can do it? You can spin straw into gold?" Your fingers itch, bloody with splintered straw.

"I can."

"I don't believe you," you say. Your voice trembles — with hope, or with despair? You do not know — "You're lying."

"I never lie. I always tell the truth. One of those things is true."

Your eyes track his hands, his fine dexterous hands, watch the straw in them gleam gold in certain light.

"He will kill me if there is no gold in the morning. I would give anything to live," you whisper.

"Anything?" he inquires languidly. "My sweet, foolish girl, be careful of your words."

(Too late. In this moment you fear him more than any king.)

"Give me your locket (_give me your favor_) and I will spin gold from straw for you."

Your knees go weak with relief (is that it, is that all he wants?). You finger the gilded, golden locket, a gift from your elder brother. He is a young merchant who travels to the Eastern Spice Islands often, who possesses an swift eye for trade and a sharp tongue of silver; who works hard for his younger siblings, and who has seen better days than what is served to him in the present. You unclasp the locket and give it to the one standing before you, the one who claims to be able to spin straw into gold.

(You are tied to him now — or he to you — as surely as if you'd eaten fruit from his hand.)

He touches it hungrily, as if it is worth a roomful of treasure (when he hangs it around his neck you forget your elder brother's face, your still living love for him that has survived all his aloofness and all the trouble and pain he has brought upon you — _Zusje, my Zusje, everything she touches is gold._)

The wheel spins and spins and the thread glitters and gleams.

**. . .**

You curse the king and again you examine the room for an escape, your soft, pale hands rendered bloody by spindles, by straw.

Then you sit, and you wait, until you hear him, your name like cream on his tongue, "Belle, my beautiful girl, why the tears?"

You say, red-eyed, face wet, voice shaking with fury and helplessness: "When will it be enough?"

He says, "Belle, innocent Belle, a man's heart is infinite, and from it greed overflows. It will never be enough."

You ask, "What shall I do?"

"Give me your ring (_give me your favor_) my sweet, sever your ties to your past and give the threads to me, and I will spin and weave and make you a future of glittering gold."

You finger the ring; a keepsake from your younger brother's first voyage, as befitting a young scholar searching knowledge from various lands. He is always knee-deep in scrolls and literature in a dozens of dialects, in a thousand tongues that you barely understand. His mind is filled with words speaking of cultures and renaissances and values of nothing; everything, of mapping the constellations moving across the heavens and of strange, new contraptions designed for the good of mankind. The ring is a paltry little thing from his first quest of learning, worth more for the memory attached to it than the silver with which it was wrought.

(_Zuster, my Zuster, everything she speaks are diamonds and roses._)

He takes your memory and puts it on his smallest finger — you feel your younger brother slip his ties of blood and walk away and suddenly cannot think why his constant absence and reserve ever wrung your heart.

"Remember, three is a magical number, and the blood of the Fair Folk runs weak too far from the source."

"Yes," you say.

"Do you understand? I will weave you a future, but you must give me the pattern to work with."

"I understand," you say. "I have only enough magic for three nights. He must come to that conclusion himself."

"Good girl," he says. (Your heart swells, fills your chest, uncomfortably large — easily bruised. How easy you are to please.)

"Then I'll be free?"

"Our definitions of freedom are not the same," he says, "for we are very different creatures, you and I."

(No. No, you will never be free.)

The wheel turns and turns and the thread glitters and gleams.

**. . .**

"I have nothing else to give you," you say on the last night, the third night, which is far from true. You have the same currency every woman has. There would be blood too, and the shedding of blood always increases the worth of something, or so it sometimes seems.

If you were wise, you would offer, rather than let him ask — but you are young, a maiden who has never been in love but believes in it nonetheless, and you cannot bring yourself to.

You imagine all the things one of his kind might ask for. You imagine: the heart of your first true love in wooden box. _Your _heart, its break or its blood. Your family. Your hands. Your voice. Your hair. Your sight. Your body is the least he could ask for. Yet you give him the choice.

He looks at you, his lips curling. Your name is cream in his mouth, but in the right dosages, everything is poison.

He leans close. "Give me your child," he breathes. You feel his words on your skin. "Your firstborn, male or female, it matters not, all I ask is that you give me your child."

"I — Yes," you say, soft and weak as a new kitten. "But — what if I have no child," you whisper, eyes on his throat to avoid his alien eyes, twinkling orbs of olive and tangerine.

He holds your chin in his hands, his palms soft, and tilts your face to his. His eyes meet yours and devour you. They are glittering, gleaming, hungry in a way you do not know. (You think he wants you, and know it is half-true.)

"You will," he tells you, matter-of-fact.

(Your mother labored and labored to bring her offsprings forth; your youngest brother was her fifth child as well as her third. But he says _you will _and there is no room for doubt.)

You suspect you have misunderstood (you hope you have misunderstood). "Will you make sure of that?" you ask, meaning to be arch and instead sounding only curious.

He laughs.

"Your child," he repeats.

(You care more for your life than for a hypothetical child. Anybody would.)

"Yes," you say, your voice a little stronger ( — live, you are going to live, and all it will take is something that may never come).

"Again," he says. "A third time I ask of you — will you give me your child in exchange for this night's work? Do you swear it?"

"I swear it," you say.

"Thrice asked, thrice agreed," he says, sits himself down and begins to spin.

You always were a fool.

**. . .**

You marry with gold straw woven into your equally gold hair, a harvest crown. Your perfume is smell of wood smoke tattooed upon your wrists as you touch the cold ashes of your spinning wheel. Your soles feel pain as you step into cold, crystalline slippers; into a cold, crystalline world.

**. . .**

Your new husband calls you things like dear (_cariño_) and darling (_bonita_) and love (_querida_), he calls you wife (_mi reina, mi amor_) as if to remind himself.

You think he does not know your name. Even if he does, he will never caress the syllables, they will not flow from him like silk, like the mere existence of them is water to a parched throat.

(But in the dark of your wedding night — and it is your bridal bed you lie upon, though the candles make odd shadows and render everything even more alien than before - your name drips like honey from his trilling tongue.

It does not hurt as much as you thought it would, yet you bite your lip and fill your mouth with blood, to have your name passed to you, cream mixing with copper.

The next night is different, but isn't that always the way?)

You wake to your husband snoring beside you, brow furrowed as if trying to remember something while trapped in dreams. You leave him there and seek the chambers set aside for you, neat and new, smelling of beeswax and poppies. You wash yourself with vinegar and watch a lonely dawn.

(_Give me your child_. The Fair Folk, they do not breed easily or well.)

Nothing grows in vinegar, the old wives say_._

They hang the bloodstained sheet from the battlements like a trophy.

**. . .**

Your body betrays you, quickens and grows. You curse your fertility and wonder what holds your babe tight when most of your brothers and sisters could not stay within your mother long enough for more than tentative names.

(_Your firstborn, male or female, it matters not, all I ask is that you give me your child._)

You hate the crown you do not wear but can still feel upon your head. You hate the dresses, the way the velvet and brocade overwhelms you, you hate the maids and the way they watch your waist, you hate the sneers of the nobles, you hate that however much you bend and bow you know it is not good enough — your deportment is wrong, the way you eat, the way you talk, the way you walk, nothing you do is good enough — they are waiting for you to break.

You will not give them the satisfaction. You straighten your back, hold your name tight and stand alone, as you always have — always save for three nights.

You hate that you are learning cruelty.

(You love that you are learning cruelty.)

"_Mi bella_," your husband calls you. "Pretty thing." he says.

(But he does not say it quite right - _give me your favor, my beautiful, my precious sweet thing_.)

"She's a pretty thing, but like a hawk is pretty," he jokes around his court — deflecting animosity with humor is a strong suit of his. "She is tame most of the time, vicious when she wants to be, and deadly with the hood off. Lucky," he laughs. "That she is always hooded."

He prizes your cruelty; he calls it majesty and watches it with gleaming emerald eyes — he thinks it means you match him, that he has found a born queen, all unknowing. He thinks other men envy him for your sweet, charming qualities tailored for diplomacy that are juxtaposed with your cool, calculating regard for trade and negotiation.

Maybe they do. Or maybe they find it even more unsettling. You may be called the Gentle Queen, but gentle does not mean (never does it mean) docile.

You smile thinly; your plump, rosebud lips curving with all secrecy and cunning like a vixen, like a feline. You let your husband think that you are blind, because you are, but you are learning to see more every day. Peering at the world through a carefully polished glass, tinted by nothing at all save your own vanity — maybe.

Your husband breathes into your hair as you watch him from your reflection. He serenades you in a foreign tongue like he did when you were still newlyweds.

"_Mi bella, mi reina_," he sighs. "_Mi amor_,"

(Who is the fairest of them all?)

You do not hate your husband. If you hated, it would be so much harder to make him love you, and you are determined to make it so. You tell yourself that it is all for such a small price; merely his unused heart that will not know the difference between love and necessary affection. But when he sweetly caresses your flaxen curls, a soft smile playing on his lips, you think that maybe, the polished glass may be enlaced with some sort of magic —

( — My darling, beautiful queen_ —_ my _love —_ )

"You are cruel, _mi bella._ My pretty, heartless robin," he says, teasing, for he does not know the truth of his words. He thinks you are learning to love him (it does not occur to him that you are teaching him). He thinks the child in your belly makes you soft, makes your heart tender (the easier to divide into pieces and give away) when in fact it is the opposite.

A faint heart serves no one — it wins no maid, protects no babe.

You lower your lashes. He had wanted gold more than he wanted you, and you would never forget that.

"I am only what you have made of me."

Under your hand, the child you have already lost kicks and turns.

**. . .**

"Motherhood suits you," he says. "It becomes you."

You cradle your child, soft and warm and vulnerable, your child with her bright eyes. (How you laughed when first you saw her — a girl-child, he will not mind the loss of a girl-child so much — you did not know the weight of her in your arms, the pull of her at your breast would turn your cold, bouillon heart soft as the finest rose petals. Whispers of '_sister, sister' _hang with the breeze.)

"You owe me life," he says gently, reading your thoughts.

"Not hers."

"Yes, hers," he says. "You promised her to me. Thrice over you promised her to me."

"You asked that I give you a child."

"Tricky girl," he says, amused. "Don't try and play games of words with me, my dear."

Was his grin always so sharp?

"Please," you say, remember the avid way he watched your tears as if he would lick them from your face to taste your pain. You let them fall (weak, let him mistake your tears for weakness the way men do).

"Do you renege on our bargain?" he says, voice turning cold, sharp, a dagger of ice in what was a summer day.

"No," you say (_Yes_, you say), thinking of your baby's eyes, bright and full of light. (You hate her, you love her — but she is _yours_ and that is all that matters.)

_"_Belle," It's been so long since you have been addressed as something other than 'Majesty' — your name is still like silk in his mouth. "Beautiful girl, where is your courage, your strength? Do your dresses of velvet drown all that you were? What do you fear from me, I who helped you for nothing but a ring, a locket and your word?"

"I will give you—"

"Anything? My sweet, foolish girl, those are the words that brought us here."

"Gold, silver—!"

"Straw?" he interrupts wryly.

"Please, ask again, anything, anything but my child,"

"My child," he corrects. "Mine, for you promised, you _swore_, and a bargain thrice made is not to be broken."

"You take from me the only thing that is mine."

"There will be other children."

"But I will know the loss of her. I do not want to replace her with other children! She cannot be replaced!"

"Hush, darling. Why do you fight so?"

"I want to keep my babe."

"Not for fear of what your husband will do when he finds the cradle empty? Have you learned to love him, Belle, do you fear his disappointment?"

You spit on the floor, peasant girl once more. "This child," you say. "This child is _mine_. I love her, I fight for her, for no reason other than she is mine."

"Good girl," he says, but your heart does not swell this time, can no longer be touched save by the restless daughter in your arms. "I will make you a deal."

"Name it," you say, helplessly. (Things circle, back to beginning the wheel has taken you.)

"Ah, but you just have. If you can call me by my true name in three nights time, you can keep the child."

(The Fair Folk do not have human names.)

**. . .**

Is he young? You think he looks young, even younger than you, but you know it can't be possible - perhaps his age (as old as the world itself, is it not?) has shrunk in your memory to try and diminish his threat. You divide him into pieces, describe each as thoroughly as you can and hope they add up to a coherent whole. His eyes are bright, so bright. You would never mistake his eyes for human. His hair is brown, is copper, is auburn, glossy as a hunting eagle's wing and fine as thistledown, his features sharp and wild.

Your messengers and spies look at you with uneasy indulgent smiles. The ones of common stock (your stock) look at you with pity, think your stumbling recollections are those of a girl once in love, that memory and loss has crafted something ordinary into something extraordinary.

You do not know what the noble-born ones think — or what your husband thinks when they tell him.

You do not care.

"Find me his name," you say. "I will reward you."

Every single one of them remembers you have Fair blood, that you can spin from straw gold that does not turn to chaff in the light of day (remember the spinning wheel is burnt but be wise enough to believe that the magic does not lie in the instrument).

Away they go, to every corner of the kingdom, bring back names that feel like anything but words in your mouth.

**. . .**

"That is not my name."

"That is not my name."

"That is not my name."

**. . .**

"My Queen, I found, I think, the man you seek."

"His name? Tell me his name!"

"My Queen, he sang while I watched, but in a language I did not know, though I am versed in a dozen or more tongues. My Queen, if his name was among those words I could not say it."

**. . .**

"What is your name," you say, your hand on his wrist, your breast upon the small of his back, your voice a pleading whisper.

He laughs. Kisses you, his teeth sharp against your soft lips, and you do not flinch. "I applaud your cunning, but do not think you can win it from me with your body, however delightful. So let go, beautiful, and keep your dignity."

"I have sent messengers to scour the length and breadth of the land. I have called upon wizards and witches and the simple ones who have dealings with your kind. I have learnt to read to know the census back and forth. I have told you all the names available to me, from ancient to modern, well-worn favorites and names I have made up. To each you have said, 'that is not my name'."

He holds your daughter in his arms, rocks her gently. She reaches for him with her tiny hands, the best of you, and the loss of her waits, like a chasm beneath your feet.

"Take her if you must, then," you say, finally. The words feel like poison, like the very berries of _belladonna_.

"A child needs a mother," he says idly.

Your heart, like a wizened peach pit in your hollow chest, drops. It faults, it struggles to beat once more.

"Have you learned to love him, your husband, the man who would have killed you if you could not spin gold from straw?"

(Has the Beauty come to love the Beast?)

"He loves me," you say simply. Not proudly, though you have worked hard to make it so. Jaden eyes and mussed calamander hair, and tender croons of, "_Tesoro, mi bella, te amo_." He loves you, he treasures you.

(But — )

"You think that will keep you safe, peasant girl who can no longer spin?"

"Perhaps," you whisper, but your eyes are on a pair of small, bright green eyes that look so much like your husband's. And the magic fades from your polished glass, washed away by tantalizing, apple-red cheeks that is your daughter's face.

"What ties you here?"

"I have no ties," you tell him. "None but my daughter. Don't you remember? I gave you the ties to my past and you cut them, but you did not give me the threads of my future to replace them. Just wove something out of them for me to tread on."

You treaded too long; your crystal heels feel like red, hot iron; every step you take cuts like a knife. You feel like a cursed siren learning how to walk on land — filled with grace and _beautiful_ —

(But — )

You see your locket around his neck, your ring upon his hand, your child in his arms. (You think he wants you, and know it to be true.)

"Then Belle, my sweet Belle, do you remember what you asked me on the second night? I told you our definitions of freedom were very different, but they are not so different as that. Let me give you freedom from our bargain, the chance to choose as you will."

You look at him, and the air is filled with something indescribable.

"In your tongue, you might say," he lingers, he knows it's killing you. "That my name is Lovino."

And irony slivers in an ancient, dead tongue as his name flickers at your ears. _Roman, man, brother._

_Destroyer_.

"Now that you may keep your daughter whatever your choice, come with me or stay as you please — but," he says. "Do as _you _please."

"Then let me give you freedom from our bargain also," you say. "My name is Emmabelle."

**. . . **

**endnotes / info.**

The name _Lovino_ can be a masculine form of Lavinia, which means "Mother of Romans". Another possible spelling is Rovino, which roughly translates into 'I ruin/destroy'.

_Emmabelle_ is a blended German-French name, the _emma _stems from the Old French and Old German _em- _meaning 'whole, entire', and can also be derived from the word _emmanuel _which translates to 'God be with us' . It's also a royal name in Medieval Europe — England, to be specific (but potato, potahto, right?)  
_Belle _is French for 'beauty' — _youdon'tsay._

The line/plot-point(?) "the king wants gold more than anything" is a reference to Conquistador!Spain, which controlled Belgium (still roughly Southern Netherlands at the time) as one of it's earliest and most profitable region. Specializing in textile and trade — as in, spinning straw into gold.

_Mi bella _means 'my beautiful [one]'. I originally wanted it to be _Mi dorabella, _but I don't think the phrase is particularly Spanish, per se (in fact, I think it is Italian, ironically) but it is a legitimate name that can be translated into 'my adorable [one]', as well as the more literal portmanteau of _dorado _(gold/golden) and _bella _(beautiful).

The "Brothers and sisters that didn't live long enough for more than tentative names" lines refers to the many quarrelling counties, kingdoms and/or fiefdoms that made up most of Europe's history. It might be a stretch, but it's a pretty line. :3

Netherlands as a merchant has quite some historical roots, Dutch traders are said to be very skilled in their work even to this day. The Eastern Spice Islands refer, of course, to the East Indies as well as other parts of Asia, colonized by the Dutch around the 16th century.

Luxembourg as a scholar, however, does not have any particular reason whatsoever, I just thought it was fitting with Himaruya's itsy-bitsy characterization of him. (oh! btw, has anyone seen Himaruya's designs for him? He's looks like a real pretty boy, methinks).

Last one: _nomen est omen_ is Latin phrase which implies that a name is fitting of an object or person. Why? Because, well, anything in Latin seems _altum videtur_. :9

Thanks for reading! :D


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